What do you like, and dislike, about Roon?

Roon Software Discussion
1

My Likes:

  1. The convenience of quick access to music in my library.
  2. The quality of music reproduction using hi-end audio items (headphones in my case).
  3. The extra information available on music via digital booklets (some composed by me), reviews and links - particularly helpful for classical music

My dislikes (and these are minor)

  1. Frustration when trying to access Roon remotely only to find it has gone off-line because of an upgrade or something else (not the fault of Roon).
  2. The lack of a pause between tracks in shuffle mode.

So yes, I am a happy camper since joining up early in 2017.

2

I actually just came to the community site today to see if this bugs anyone else: I really dislike how some of the info blurbs that Roon populates are more opinionated ā€˜reviewsā€™ on albums than actual details. Sure, some guy named Sean at Tivo has strong opinions on this album, but Iā€™d rather just have context and details when Iā€™m browsing Roon.

3

Perhaps this may help. Under Settings > General > Editorial Sources, you can change the order of preferred sources by using the dots to the left of the source (see pic below). Iā€™ve changed it to go to Wikipedia first as I prefer to see this rather some review/opinion of some stranger.

Hope this helps. If Iā€™ve completely missed the mark and misunderstood your concern, my apologies. :blush:

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image2360Ɨ1640 230 KB

4

Pro: I love the hybrid approach, nas and streaming services all in one.

Con: Too many updates, a lot of people are impacted and that is Roon to blame. I am less happy than I used to be with Roon. Although I have a lifetime subscription, I am thinking more often to leave Roon :cry:

Cheers John

5

What!?!?!! THANK YOU! this is exactly what I needed. Thank you for an easy solution, not sure why iā€™ve never known that.

6

What I like about Roon is the seamless integration of my local music library with my Tidal library. Having everything presented as one unified collection makes music discovery and library management incredibly convenient.

I also really enjoy the multiroom functionality. The fact that I can stream different music to multiple endpoints simultaneously using a single Tidal account is impressive. Just for fun, I tested it on every phone, tablet, and laptop in the family and had music playing on 14 endpoints at the same time without any issues.

What I donā€™t like about Roon is the user interface. Although it was probably considered modern when it was designed, it feels dated today. It wastes a lot of screen space, which means far too much scrolling is required. In my opinion, itā€™s frustrating that even all the tracks of a single album often donā€™t fit on one screen.

Iā€™m also not a fan of the recommendations. The suggested albums on artist pages and especially the recommendations on the home screen rarely align with my musical tastes. After years of use, I would expect the recommendation engine to understand my preferences much better.

Another downside is the almost complete lack of customization. Users have very little control over layouts, information density, navigation, or the appearance of the interface. It often feels like youā€™re forced to use Roon exactly the way its designers intended.

I also find Roon to be heavier and less responsive than it should be at times. Given the hardware requirements and subscription cost, I would expect a faster and more streamlined experience.

Overall, Roon remains one of the best music library managers available thanks to its integration, metadata, and multiroom capabilities. However, its dated interface, weak recommendations, limited customization options, and relatively high cost prevent it from being the perfect solution.

7

Iā€™m glad it helped. :+1:

Roon isnā€™t always very intuitive to use. After 10 years, I still have issues sometimes trying to figure out how to do some things, especially things not done regularly, and the Roon Knowledge Base is often out of date or lacks sufficient procedure details.

8

Iā€™ve always noticed TiVo is really, really flaky, editorially speaking, both substance and tone. Yesterday I was looking at their dismissive appraisal of a highly-regarded album, not just by listeners but audiophiles. I wanted to reach through to TiVo and smack the reviewer. Obviously they never listened to the album nor took it on its own merits, which is where the reviewerā€™s disdain could have frozen an iceberg. Icky!

9

I accept that an album can be appealing even if it isnā€™t for your proverbial nerdy rock critic. I donā€™t mind the snarky reviews so much, though, as I appreciate when they can call out an album for being derivative, bland, common and such. So Iā€™m all in with the TiVo (formerly allmusic) people, and have been for decades. Each to their own.

That Roon gives the abovementioned slider to favour TiVo snarky or other kinds of blurb is a big plus.

I also like how the program has (none-too-subtly) encouraged tagging some premium masters and other digital follies / digital commitments: I think Iā€™d be too content with something like Apple Music were this not apparent (and witness the strain on my PC).

I dislike how much Roon costs, replete with the feature bloat (Iā€™ll never utilize multiple audio zones nor ARC), but yes, I have made my peace with it.

10

Iā€™ve been using Roon for about a year and a half now, after about 15 years with JRiver.

What I like best is the way Roon seemingly effortless handling of network streaming. You can really tell it was designed with networking in mind from the start. I also like the user interface more and more the longer I use it. Itā€™s super easy to explore different aspects of your music as youā€™re listening, and I enjoy that a lot.

What I dislike is Roonā€™s playlist support. Itā€™s rudimentary at best and is in dire need of upgrades. Even simple things like limiting the size of a smart playlist are missing. I just bought a lifetime subscription during the recent sale, and now Iā€™m hoping Iā€™m around long enough to see some improvements in this area!

11

holoe

i like
hqp integration
qobuz integration
tidal integration

i dislike
inability to multi select rearrangement of playlist files
purple only text

12

I like the stability of the new version and good sound performance on Tidal.

I donĀ“t like that Roon canĀ“t stream from my Spotify Hifi account.

13

I like

  • the hybrid approach with Tidal and local music
  • the ability to eq with Muse different profiles for my headphones
  • Roon Radio and ARC
  • availability of covers and additional information on artists
  • Lifetime subscription model
  • Independence from Hardware streaming solutions and manufacturer updates (Iā€™m an Auralic owner :cry: )

I donā€™t like

  • the poor performance of RAAT in wireless networks with higher bitrates compared to direct streaming via Tidal
14

I like Roon, but I dislike, that Roon acknowledges issues, raises tickets, and does nothing to fix said issues. I also dislike that Roon for many years didnā€™t engage in open dialogue, about when these issues will be addressed.

I also dislike that Roon team members donā€™t involve themselves in user troubleshooting, especially when the issues are known software items.

For instance; acknowledged procedural IIR issues, FIR execution failures, cross point transition popping and clicking (which remains baked into the RAAT protocol) which has been acknowledged for many years. Yet there has been no advancements.

Whoever designed MUSE also forgot that it was not just a stereo linearisation or 2ch EQ tool. Once multichannel and FIR was added, some thought was really needed to provide intuitive speaker and driver management for users, particularly around how headroom and gain is managed by output.

Roon could learn a lot by referencing CamillaDSP, and/or pro audio speaker closed and open architecture speaker managers.

15

Everything about Roon is fine, just the search does not work very well, especially search for playlists, and the UI is kind of old-dated, though functional.

16

Why is this not in Feedback ?

17

What I really like about Roon:

  1. One place, one GUI for everything. I have around 120000 ALAC files on my NAS, a Qobuz subscription, I play music on my home stereo (T+A HiFi & Audio Physic Speaker) and on the go (Smartphone, Sony or Sennheiser headset), and I can turn to Roon for my one GUI to access it all. Thatā€™s very convenient.
  2. Many options to configure it the way I want. It did some headscratching things when I first started with it, and I wasnā€™t going to budge on the way I keep my own Metadata (which resulted in a lengthy, but quite interesting thread when I first started with Roon: Roon splits up tracks from some albums. Why? ), but it turned out thatā€™s all not an issue. Roon is highly configurable, and I can get it to do what I want in the way I want, no issues.
  3. Background information and cross references within your library. Thatā€™s something I enjoy. Sure, Roon relies on third party Metadata (how else would that be possible), and they are often off or and not terribly reliable or consistent (especially when it comes to film scores), but itā€™s still quite nice to see your own collection become a cross referenced database.
  4. One of my favorites: the various information you get about the files, and the audio signal path.
  5. Last but by no means least: This forum here! A lively active community full of very helpful, knowledgeable, sometimes opinionated (which is fine by me), and articulate people. Thatā€™s really great. Lots of fine folks posting here in this forum, I have learned a lot. This is a fine forum with lots of support, tipps and tricks, or just interesting talk.

What I donā€™t like about Roon:

  1. Pricing really. Itā€™s just too expensive for my own needs, and while Roon is the one GUI that combines everything, I can do pretty much everything I can do with Roon without Roon, at least the functions that I personally use. (I know for some people for example multi-room is very important, and Roon seems to do that well, but that is a non-issue for me personally.) My own music server apps, Qobuz connect, MinimServer, etc. can do all the stuff Roon can, just as good, just as fast, often faster, at the fraction of the cost. But I understand, Roon is a premium product, and the price is what it is, Iā€™m not complaining. But when asked, thatā€™s the main issue I have with it. Itā€™s too expensive for what it brings to my personal table.
18

Likes:

  • Unified library for both local files and steaming content.
  • Focus - Iā€™ve got a number different combinations of these saved as bookmarks so I can quickly hone in on what Iā€™m looking for. Listen Later and Random sorting are two more recent features that I find very useful.
  • DSP - the pre-fab headphone EQs are great, and being able to take room measurements (I used House Curve) and import a convolution filter for room correction into Roon was a game changer for me and my very sub-optimal room. Neither my amp (a 20+ year old Yamaha AVR) or my streamer (a Node 2i) have room correction functionality.
  • All of the editorial content available in the app. Also, with my large collection of concert recordings, most of which come with an ā€œinfoā€ text file which can be printed to PDF and saved in the musicā€™s folder, making that information available both in album view and the now playing screen. Use case example: jazz concerts where Iā€™m wondering who is playing a particular instrument. I also will save liner notes from Bandcamp this way when there is no pdf booklet included.

Dislikes:

  • The biggest for me is the wall between Roon (Remote) and ARC. Give me one app I can use at home or on the go. It can be done, see: Plexamp. At the very least, allow users to transfer the current now playing item and queue from one app to the other. And while ARC is fine when on WiFi, it struggles with the sketchy cell coverage in the rural-ish area where I live.
  • Customization of the web display isnā€™t built into the application.

I wonā€™t even gripe about the cost, the software does a lot.

19

Likes

Itā€™s easy to use and fairly reliable.

Dislikes

Thereā€™s a lot of features I donā€™t use or need making its perceived value expensive (I donā€™t use any streaming service all of my music is stored locally, also donā€™t use any DSP features) so a simple NAS based UPNP music server would do, my Nucleus is nearly 4 years old so Iā€™ll be looking for alternatives when subscription renewal is due.

20

Likes

  • Great way to discover new artists, artist relations, new music. I like to read the information when I am listening.
  • Sound quality with Roon Ready devices
  • Roon Radio

Dislikes

  • UI on iPad/iPhone. It is too easy to touch something you donā€™t want to. For example, you read a long text halfway through and accidentally close it. Then you have to reopen it and find the spot where you were again.
  • Some UI elements need more explanation

Dirk